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Soup

Consomme Aux Pates

A clear consommé made with veal, beef, and vegetables, served with boiled Italian pasta.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Consomme Aux Pates

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Cut the veal stock meat into 2‑inch squares and scald the giblets.

  2. In a large stewpan, melt the butter and add the onions, meat, and bones.

  3. Moisten with ½ pint of common stock and simmer on low heat until a glaze forms.

  4. Once browned, add 2½ pints of stock and ¼ ounce of coarse sea salt, bringing to a boil while skimming.

Simmer the broth

  1. Add diced carrots, turnips, leeks, parsley, and bouquet garni, then simmer for 3.5 hours.

  2. Strain the broth, let it cool, remove the fat, and clarify with raw beef and egg.

Serve with pasta

  1. Blanch the Italian pasta, then simmer in broth or water for 15 minutes.

  2. Drain the pasta and place it in a soup tureen, pouring the hot consommé over it.

  3. Serve with grated Parmesan.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Veal bones
Release gelatin and flavour into the broth during the long simmer.
Raw beef
Traps cloudy particles during clarification, leaving the consommé clear.
Egg
Its white binds fine particles so they can be strained out, clarifying the broth.
Onions
Browning in butter adds color and deep savory aroma to the broth.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and aroma to the long-simmered broth.

The step that matters

Clarify the broth with raw beef and egg. Stirring in raw beef and egg white lets their proteins coagulate and trap cloudy particles as the broth heats. Careless stirring or boiling too hard breaks up the raft, leaving the consommé cloudy instead of clear.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, meat, beef, butter, onion, turnip, leek):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, meat, beef, butter, onion, turnip, leek. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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